He isn’t President yet, is he? So if Bush dies, or Bush resigns and then Cheney dies, or any of a number of technically possible scenarios (including Obama dies between now and January 20th, which is entirely possible given the number of haters with guns out there), he could end up being 45, or 46, or no number at all, correct?
Not that I have anything against the image of him wearing Hank Aaron’s uniform, or Willie McCovey’s or Reggie Jackson’s. I kinda like the image of him as the first African-American power hitter in the White House.
Bush couldn’t say, “Oh, fuck it. Dick, you’re the man”? That’s got to be at least likely as a death of a healthy middle-aged man in the next two months.
Considering his sport of choice (with some amount of talent), I think the uniforms to consider are Jerry West’s, Iceman Gervin’s or Danny Ainge’s.
(Unless the African American part of it is important, in which case you’ll have to look harder than I did to get three options; but West and Ainge both make some sense for Obama, as they won championships as general managers).
Correct, yes, but extremely unlikely. I don’t think presumptuous, with it connotation of assuming more than is called for, applies in this case. It’s a quite reasonable, almost assured, expectation. People are aware that it’s not yet fact, but they’re also aware how slim the odds are that it won’t become fact.
If I were vice president, I would hope it would be under some cool president. You know, like, he retires two weeks before his term is up just to give me the chance to be president for a couple of weeks. Then you know he’s one cool dude.
My point-- and it’s a really tiny one–is that once he’s sworn in, then he’s “44” and no way in hell to change that. Now it’s just a teeny bit presumptuous, is all.
And it’s kinda like Bush giving Cheney the keys to the car two days before his driver’s license becomes official. “We will commence bombing in one hour!” only this time it’s not a joke.
Calling him 44 is making an assumption that’s not strictly supported. That isn’t particularly presumptuous. It’s not presumptuous to talk about my thanksgiving plans in Kentucky, even though it might not come to pass for any number of reasons. “Presumptuous” implies that the assumption is unwarranted. That is not the case here.
In a way, shouldn’t we also hold-off on calling him President Elect until we know for sure the world isn’t going to end?
Anything can happen, but we call him President Elect and assume things will go normally. If they don’t, he was still President Elect and it just never played out.
Why would anyone bother referring to him by a number anyway? We used “Bush 41” and “Bush 43” sometimes so that we could tell those identically-named presidents apart. But that’s not an issue in Obama’s case.
Sure it’s presumptuous to talk about your Thanksgiving dinner in Kentucky. “I plan to go to Kentucky for Thankgiving,” no, But “I’m going to have the most delicious, totally allergin-free, slightly-underdone roast pork flambee, with chutney sauce on the side in two weeks’ time and then I’m going to watch DUMBO on my grandma’s DVD” makes a few presumptions that you wouldn’t have made a week after these occurred.
Well, that would give Cheney a nice jump in his Federal pension, for those two months of being President. Not that he needs it, since he’s already fiscally obese.